Talk of Secession Amid Sips

Jackie's 5th Amendment, a bar on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn, has found itself at odds with its changing neighborhood.
Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

By

Anne Kadet

Nov. 30, 2012 9:52 p.m. ET

New Yorkers are tribal folks: Gothamites want to secede from the U.S.; Staten Islanders want to secede from the city; and folks in East Williamsburg want to secede from Williamsburg. Now, Jackie's 5th Amendment, the famously unassuming Brooklyn bar, wants to secede from its own neighborhood, the famously precious Park Slope.

At least that's according to a petition recently filed online with the White House: "Due to the changing nature of the neighborhood and the fact that we are beginning to take offense when potential customers come into the bar, look around them with disdain, and leave….We the people of Jackie's 5th Amendment at 404 5th Avenue request the permission of the United States Government to peacefully secede from Park Slope and become our own neighborhood."

Reading the news on a local blog, I nodded in sympathy. I want to secede from Park Slope, and I don't even live there. Others found the petition tiresome. Why now? After all, Park Slope went upscale decades ago. "Are people just blind?" posted one wag. "In the case of Jackie's, perhaps they are just drunk."

Or perhaps entirely unaware. On a recent afternoon, regulars at the bar said they had no idea what I was talking about. "What petition?" asked bartender Tony Ferrara. I gave him a copy. He slipped on his reading glasses, studied the document and chuckled. "This is beautiful!" he said.

He didn't know who was behind petition, but said it contained a grain of truth. "People come in here and look around, and they're aghast!" he said.

Jackie's was once your typical Park Slope watering hole, but the neighborhood changed, and now people call it a dive. With its wood paneling, American flags and stucco ceiling, it looks like a Midwestern rec room. The most popular drink is the $10 "Bucket of Buds" served on a pie tin. The customers are folks who have a lot of free time to spend in a bar.

Linda, a Jackie's bartender who declined to give a surname, said some Park Slopers criticize the place for opening early in the morning. Then there's the Nanny Brigade marching by with their strollers. "They go like this when we're smoking outside," she said, fanning her nose. The worst are the folks who come in to use the toilet: "They walk past me like I'm invisible. Our bathroom is good enough for them to use, but our bar isn't good enough for them to drink at."

That afternoon, the only Jackie's patron looking stereotypically Park Slopish was Michael Collins, a hair stylist visiting from Minneapolis. He'd spent the prior evening at Excelsior, the gay bar down the street, and was waiting for it to open so he could retrieve his scarf. He'd received a warm welcome at Jackie's. "It's comfortable here," he said. "Although I asked for a glass of wine and there was really nothing I'd even consider drinking."

The out-of-towner could see how Jackie's no longer fit its surroundings. His Park Slope friends, he said, drink kale smoothies for breakfast. They home-school their children. For Thanksgiving, they served mushroom shepherd's pie instead of turkey. "They're right out of 'Portlandia,'" said Mr. Collins.

Jackie's is not 'Portlandia.' It is Park Slope 1972. As the regulars passed the petition around, reactions were colorful, and obscene. "It's hokey pokey BS!" said one. A man who said his name was Frank O'Brien declared that when owner Harold Costello died, the yuppies would likely take over Jackie's and change it, "because they have the money."

But he was more interested in chatting about himself. A Park Slope native, he said he used to sell guns and had been to seven federal prisons. He'd dated Mia Farrow. He was shot in the face while serving in Vietnam, "but they put me back together again." And did he mention that he once took Carl Lewis and his personal friend Annie Leibovitz to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge? "I'm a happy guy," he concluded. "God bless America."

As the sun set and the room faded, silence fell over the bar. "Tony Baloney, it's too quiet in here," sighed a sleepy lady in a ski cap. "I don't want to hear my thoughts. Put the game on."

The next morning, Mr. Costello, the owner, was up early, vacuuming the bar's back room. A former iron worker from Newfoundland, he opens Jackie's at 8 a.m. for workers coming off the night shift. It's been the routine since 2005, when Jackie died. "My wife ran the bar," says Mr. Costello. "I loved her. Everybody loved her. She was a smart lassie."

A trim 68-year-old with bright blue eyes, Mr. Costello said he hadn't bothered to read the mysterious petition. What he knows is that Jackie's serves a purpose: "It's a family bar. Not these bars charging $10 a drink. How are the regular people going to buy that?"

And Mr. Costello doesn't care what you think. "If you like it, come in. If you don't, say goodbye. That's the way I am."

It was Mr. Ferrara who finally solved the petition mystery. The creator, he realized, studying the fine print, was Rebecca McCarthy, the bartender on the night shift.

Ms. McCarthy, 23, is a relative newcomer, an English major taking time off between semesters. She's worked behind the bar for a year. "It was just supposed to be a joke," she said later, of the petition. "I was bored at work." While she feels Jackie's doesn't get the respect it deserves—serving as a home-away-from-home for the old-timers—she says there isn't much real antagonism between the bar and the neighborhood. The 40 protesters who signed the online petition were mainly her friends: "Most of the regulars don't even have computers."

Still, now that the idea's been planted, who knows what's next? Perhaps the best idea came from Mr. Ferrara, who said the petition got everything backward. "The old timers, they'd want the rest of the community to secede from Park Slope," he said. "And they can stay!"

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